


Charge of the Trenchcoat Brigade

by Villainyandgoodcheekbones



Series: The Hell-Raising Chronicles of the Trenchcoat Brigade [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, If you don't know about John Constantine your life has been an empty one indeed, Trenchcoat Brigade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:29:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainyandgoodcheekbones/pseuds/Villainyandgoodcheekbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chronicle of Trenchcoats, bar fights, and too many cigarettes.<br/>Or, modern AU Bahorel, Feuilly and Grantaire, and how they first met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charge of the Trenchcoat Brigade

It begins like this:

The bar has literally been taken over. There is a man up onstage, using the karaoke mic to guide everyone on a vision quest to find their “spirit guide”. He’s a little too drunk, and a little too stoned, and is painfully sincere.

What’s worse is that everyone else is, too. Bahorel is alone, adrift. His only anchor is the charged “are you _fucking_ kidding me?” stare he’s exchanging over the top of his beer with the blue-eyed man across the room. Bahorel raises his eyebrow, and the other guy shrugs, tilting his head to one side. They both glance at the door.

They start a fight out of desperation; Vision-Quest won’t let anyone leave.

$82.73 in miscellaneous damages later, they’ve finally managed to get themselves thrown out.

Bahorel laughs, because other guy somehow managed to make it out with an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, which he raises in a triumphant salute.

“How that _fuck_ did you manage that?” Other Guy grins. His lip is bleeding.

“Oh, you know” he drawls “My spirit guide showed me the way.” Bahorel snorts. “It’s true. The ghost of John Constantine guides my waking days.” Other Guy scrutinizes the label, tonguing at his split lip. “Which explains a lot, really.” Bahorel buys Other Guy a drink at the next bar, because fucking _Hellblazer,_ and because Other Guy pronounces it right, “Constantine” like “turpentine”  and not like “tangerine” (and that movie is honestly fucking terrible, not matter how much Jehan likes the visuals).

Other guys introduces himself, but by the time Feuilly forces him out of bed the next morning, with a kick and the promise of coffee, Bahorel’s forgotten, so Other Guy stays “Constantine” in his head. Other Guy stops being Constantine two weeks later, the day that Poland plays Argentina.

Bahorel goes looking for Feuilly, because he has the score, and Feuilly has two things: his wallet (Feuilly is broke again. So is Bahorel, but not as much, so he dosen’t mind helping), and the _best_ fucking faces whenever Poland plays. Feuilly, when Bahorel finds him, has charcoal streaking his face from jaw to temple, a sketchpad on his knee and a tar-haired man stretched out in front of him with one arm over his face and other hand curled around a bottle of Heineken. There’s a green stripe up his wrist where the sun shines through, and he looks vaguely familiar.

Bahorel greets Feuilly with “Down by two, end of the first half.” There’s a soft click as the charcoal stick snaps in half.

“I _hate_ you.” Feuilly groans “You are a _terrible_ human being.” Heineken-guy rolls over, blinking, and says “Surprisingly, still not the worst feedback I’ve gotten. Although most people stick to ‘you can be difficult to work with’ or ‘you suck as a model’”.

Huh. He _knew_ the guy looked fucking familiar.

“Constantine.”

“…Conan.”

Among the reasons that Feuilly is the best fucking roommate ever, is that instead of saying something fucking _stupid_ like “you know each other?” or “how did you meet”, he looks up with a murderous glare and says “If you jinxed my team by stealing some magic relic, I swear to God, I will come to you in the night, and I will draw graphically detailed genitalia on everything you love and there will be nothing that can save you, no matter how many high priestesses you sleep with.”  Then he buries his face in his hands and moans. “God, why would you _do_ that to me? Asshole”.

Feuilly smokes when he’s nervous. Over the next few hours, he makes it through a two-pack chain of cheap, off-brand cigarettes. He only gets halfway through the third, although that’s largely because Grantaire ends up with the other half via a combination of begging and outright theft. Poland pulls off a last-minute rally, winning 3-2 in the last four seconds of play. Feuilly is fucking _glowing_ with triumph, cheeks flushed and his hair like a flame. At Grantaire’s suggestion, they go out and get absolutely fucking _wasted_ on Polish beer to celebrate. The only reason they don’t get thrown out is that the bartender is worried they might not get back up. They barely make it back to Grantaire’s place as it is (he’s fifteen minutes away, but Bahorel and Feuilly live across town, so his apartment wins out) although the look on the cab driver’s face is god-damn glorious.

Grantaire’s studio has a mattress on the floor, an antique liquor cabinet in the corner, a second-hand print of the _Apollo Belvedere_ (“Art history project. His abs are a platonic ideal, they reveal to me a higher truth.”) on the far wall and no couch.

Surprisingly, it’s not really awkward at all. Bahorel and Feuilly sleep together anyway. They’re not _sleeping together_ , just…

It just happened. Feuilly was broke (again) so he couldn’t pay his half of the utilities, so the heat got shut off. Which was fine by Bahorel; Bahorel wore vests ( _awesome_ vests. Fuck Courfeyrac and his button-downs) in January. But Feuilly slept under the window, and he looked so… _sad_ , like fucking Orphan Annie in the snow, red-haired and shivering, so it was really just easier to slide in next to him. Then summer came, and they just never stopped. Bahorel sleeps on his stomach, with Feuilly halfway underneath him, tucked against his side.

Grantaire, as it turns out, sleeps at fucking impossible angles that _cannot_ be comfortable _at all_ , twisted around himself like he’s fucking doing yoga in his sleep, so they end up in a huge pile of limbs, and Bahorel has a mouth full of Feuilly’s hair all night. Somehow, it works out; Feuilly manages to turn Grantaire’s lack of groceries into peanut-butter French toast in the morning, and Grantaire grins around his fork and says “Pleasure sleeping with you, gentlemen”, which isn’t even that funny, but Bahorel almost chokes himself laughing anyway.

Feuilly is the one who discovers that they all have the same jacket, Grantaire is the one who dubs them “The Trenchcoat Brigade” and Bahorel is the one who invites Grantaire to the ABC meeting in three days. He presents Grantaire to Enjolras with the single-greatest poker face he has ever held in his life, and retreats to the back, because he’s not fucking _stupid_ , and the view is better from there anyway.

They’re terrible for each other, and Feuilly tells him so, drumming blue-and-purple fingers on the table. Terrible, but also kind of awesome at the same time.  Bahorel smiles, (and shows too many teeth when he grins like that, fierce and gleeful, the same way the way he looks during a fight) and replies “I _know_.” It’s gonna be fucking fantastic.


End file.
